The Longest Sermon

Clinton Locy was a cattle ranch foreman in Southern California when a Baptist preacher persuaded him to go to church. He heard one sermon and decided to be a preacher himself. Last week he gave a sermon that lasted 48 hours and 18 minutes.

Into the Night Wind. Ranch Foreman Locy first became Preacher Locy at the Holy Land Bible Knowledge Society in Los Angeles. Then he spent 30 years barnstorming the U.S. and Canada--the last 19 of them in a trailer--teaching the Bible with the help of pictures. When Clinton and his wife Georgia settled down a couple of years ago in West Richland, Wash. (pop. 1,000), they set about starting a Visual Bible Training Center.

They built it practically all with their own hands, a flat-topped building decked inside with maps of Palestine; some day they hoped to add a second story for a real church. To mark the establishment of the training center, Locy felt something special was indicated. His thoughts flew back to his old dean, Dr. A. F. Flutterer. Flutterer had once preached for 24 hours straight; Locy would preach 48. His subject: every book in the Bible, plus the Atomic Age.

He went to bed at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon to rest up, but his mind churned so with thoughts that, when he began to preach at midnight, he had not slept a wink. About a dozen of his followers were on hand for his opening words: "Men are on earth to find truth and live it out. Truth is power. Without truth man dies." Two loudspeakers atop the building picked up his words from a throat microphone and flung them into the night wind.

"I'm Hungry." Three listeners stuck it out until 4 a.m., then left to go to work. At one point on Sunday morning, there were as many as 50. Sometimes there was only one, Carl Heminger. whose specialty is showing colored slides at church gatherings. Preacher Locy preached as he never preached before, sustaining himself with lemon juice and vegetables, refreshing himself with a wet towel around his head, relieving himself at the back of the building, and talking into the mike all the time. After 24 hours he got to the Book of Psalms, and Georgia brought him a plate of hot food from their trailer home next door. Spooning in some beans, Preacher Locy momentarily forgot what he was there for. "Say something there, boy," said Apostle Heminger. "I'm hungry," said Preacher Locy.

At 12:19 on Monday. Clinton Locy called it quits. He had made his way through all the Old Testament and most of the New, sung some hymns, lectured on the Holy Land, and delivered some reflections on the atom bomb. "If anyone had sat through the entire sermon," he said, "they would have heard as much Gospel as they'd get in a year at church."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.